Posted: March 4, 2006; updated: March 6, 2006 with
comment from Little

JAN TING PREVAILS IN SENATE POLL AGAINST DIRTY
TRICKS

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

The Republicans probably could have used a better
entry into their campaign against U.S. Sen. Thomas R.
Carper, the Democrat with the record for statewide
victories, than to have their likely nominee
sucker-punched by their own.

Nevertheless, Jan C. Ting was forced to defend
himself Friday evening against his past and accusations
that he was not fit to run because he protested against
the Vietnam War as a student more than 30 years ago.

So much for the Republicans learning from Vice
President Dick Cheney that it only hurts themselves to
shoot another Republican.

It scuffed what was otherwise a triumphant debut for
Ting at a party event -- the Delaware Republicans'
annual winter meeting with a straw poll of its U.S.
Senate candidates during a dinner at the Christiana
Hilton.

Ting, a Temple University law professor who once
chaired the Brandywine Hundred Republicans, easily
prevailed with 79 percent of the vote against Michael D.
Protack, an airline pilot with an obsession for running
for high office in a bashing, him-against-the-world
style.

Ting won 64-16 with one abstaining in a secret-ballot
vote of the members of the Republican State Committee,
the party's governing structure. Straw polls typically
are too phony to mean anything -- won by the candidate
who buys up the most tickets -- but this one with its
restricted voting provides a gauge of the candidates'
backing within the party leadership.

Ting raised his arms in victory when the results were
announced and responded to the applause with perhaps the
most pleasing remarks he could have delivered -- "Thank
you, please celebrate with us and have a drink."

Priscilla B. Rakestraw, the Republican national
committeewoman who is an honorary chair of Ting's
campaign, called the vote "a sharp message for positive
campaigning."

Protack shrugged off the defeat, saying it was not
surprising. Thomas L. Little, the lawyer for Protack's
campaign, spun his candidate's showing as a significant
measure of success. "If he got 20 percent in here, he
won. It was a hateful crowd," Little said.

Little apologized afterwards for his wording and said
he meant to say, "They as a group hate him." He said the
contest was fair, and he enjoyed being part of the
American political experience.

The straw poll demonstrated the state committee
members' rejection of two anti-Ting letters circulated
among them in the week beforehand. The letters
criticized Ting for his Vietnam-era activities and
suggested he would cost the Republicans the veterans'
vote if he became the nominee.

Peter J. Kopf, a former Brandywine Hundred Republican
chair, sent one letter. The other, written on the
letterhead of the Delaware chapter of the Air Force
Association, a veterans' group, was signed by Richard B.
Bundy and Arthur G. Ericson. None of them could be found
at the dinner.

Ting acknowledged he was "on the wrong side of the
Vietnam War debate" and said he regretted it. He was not
interested in talking about what he had done, however,
sidestepping questions about the depth of his
involvement in war protests or even whether he had long
hair -- "my dad thought it was long."

Ting said he changed his mind after meeting Vietnam
refugees and finding out about the travails of his own
Chinese relatives under Mao's Cultural Revolution. By
1979, he said, he was organizing law professors for
Ronald Reagan.

Ting's chagrin over his days of protesting made him
one Republican who could relate to Cheney. "You know how
Dick Cheney felt when he shot his friend in the face?
That's how I felt. I had made a mistake," he said.

Ting believes Protack was behind the effort to
discredit him. Protack said he was not.

Republican officials pleaded throughout the evening
for the party to unite and to resist attack politics.
"We need to support whoever comes out [the winner] of
these type events," said U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle.
"You've got to be very careful who you insult, because
it's going to get back to them before the night's out."

The party leaders are unlikely to get their wish.
Protack opened his remarks at the dinner with a limp
joke about the difference between a mob boss and a
political boss -- "there's some things the mob boss just
won't do" -- and ended the evening by vowing to battle
Ting all the way through the state convention in April,
when the party endorses a statewide slate, to the
primary in September, when the nominee is elected.